


Welcome to Brock's Landing

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Gothic, Homicidal Protectiveness, Horror, Lovecraftian, Murderers, Original Fiction, Period-Typical Racism, Selkies, Towns With Dark Secrets, Vampires, Witches, dark fantasies, holidays gone wrong, monsters vs monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:06:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26941861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Vampire siblings Edith and Edgar Morton are on a scenic and murderous tour of the North Atlantic coastline, mostly because Edgar fucked up and almost got caught with a body back home. They've come to the little fishing town of Brock's Landing. They might not beleavingBrock's Landing.
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	Welcome to Brock's Landing

**Author's Note:**

> Since I've been watching Dark Shadows lately, what with the vampires and scenic Collinsport, I decided I'd dust off an [old story idea](https://honourablejester.tumblr.com/post/153312895362/vampires-and-other-beasties) I promised myself I'd write some day: namely, the one about vampires and selkies, and a vampiric couple realising a shade too late that they're holidaying in Innsmouth. Heh.

Brock's Landing was one of those quaint, aggressively picturesque sorts of places, a little wharf and fishing village nestled into scenic cliffs, fronting onto a wide North Atlantic bay. It was one of those little towns that, barring the odd few details like power lines and bank machines and SUVs, could have sprung up from just about any period over the last century and a half. It hit that perfect median, the idyllic setting of the past and the convenient comforts of the present.

It was the sort of place that always inspired simultaneous nostalgia and contempt in Edith. She had, after all, been there for the _real_ and all too often less-than-idyllic past. This sort of place, this, this happy fantasy of a bygone age, couldn't help but irk her just a little.

Ah well. At least the annoyance would silence any awkward twinges of conscience later. She never did regret feeding in places like these. It had a sort of ... poetic justice to it, reminding them of the lurking ugliness beneath their pretty, glossed-over histories. It was practically a public service, her coming here. A dose of reality to prick their perfect little bubble would do the place no harm at all.

Well. Beyond the bodies, of course, but she did plan to dispose of those where they wouldn't bother anyone for a few months yet. It did pay to be cautious, after all.

"... Do we _have_ to?" Edgar asked beside her. Petulantly, as ever. Edith grimaced automatically in his direction, but he was ignoring her still. He was leaning on the steering wheel, looking down over the village with a jaundiced eye. "I know you wanted to do the whole 'scenic tour' thing, Edith, but really? This is the fourth of these damned places this month. Haven't you had enough of pretty little villages yet?"

Edith glared at him. "I don't know," she said, sharply and dangerously. "I had thought this little holiday was for me, a reward for saving your skin yet again, but if you'd rather do something else, I'm sure I don't mind. Perhaps you'd like to get caught with your teeth out again, hmm? Or how about dragging a body behind a warehouse? I'm sure that according to you there's no reason at all why we can't just go straight back home, now is there?"

He did look over at her then. Blood in his eyes, his teeth run out in a snarl. She sneered right back at him, utterly unimpressed. It was his own damned fault. The whole damned blasted business was his fault, and if she wanted him to drive her around the whole North Atlantic coast in payment for it, then he would damn well knuckle down and drive her. One hundred and twenty years they'd been walking this earth together, and in all that time he'd never been anything but a burden to her. If he hadn't been her brother, why--!

Well. Let's just say, if he hadn't been her brother, she would never have bothered bringing him back after that first death of his at all. And he knew it, too. After all these years he damn well ought to.

He hissed out a breath between his teeth, his knuckles white on the wheel. There was such a depth of hatred in his eyes, such a seething, boiling stew of anger, but he'd have been dead and rotted long since if it wasn't for her, and gradually he remembered it too. Gradually his teeth shrank back behind his lips, and his hands loosened their death grip on the wheel.

"Damn you Edie," he spat, turning away from her once again. "Damn you once and for all."

She snorted, brushing at her skirt. "Long since taken care of, Ed," she noted snidely. "Now be a dear and get us down into town, will you? We'll want to have a human meal first, get the lay of the land and find somewhere unobtrusive to stay. They're always so watchful around strangers in these places. We'll want to establish our credentials before nightfall. _Won't_ we."

All of which he knew, of course, but she was in the mood to rub his nose in his incompetence a little longer. Honestly, to be _spotted_ burying a body. And then letting the spotter _escape_. Of all the abject idiocy. No, he wasn't getting off this hook for quite a long time yet.

They spent the drive down the rest of the cliffs, therefore, in stiff, angry silence, and the thin brightness of the early evening sunshine. It was rather fitting, really. A thin veneer of picturesque sunshine over rage and decades of hatred. Absolutely perfect for the small-town atmosphere. What better mood in which to approach the ever-so-quaint Brock's Landing?

A place that only got quainter the closer she came to it, it had to said. It really did trumpet its age, the wharf area in particular. No modern fishery for this place, though she had spied a more twentieth-century-looking marina a little way up the coast. In the village itself, though, it was all wooden rowboats and nineteenth century sloops. My, they were going all out, weren't they? There was green netting strung along the length of the wharf, a few of those little glass floats strung along it. It was positively disgusting. It really was.

And however quaint the town was, the people were more so again. All wellingtons and thick woolens and once or twice oilskin weather gear that looked right out of the nineteenth century as well. _Really_ now. Did no one here realise that there was such a thing as taking an image too far?

Oh, she wasn't going to regret feeding here. She wasn't going to regret it at all.

They parked down by the wharf. Not from any particular choice, it simply appeared to be the done thing in Brock's Landing. Though doing so did, rather more happily, provide a couple of options for acquiring that initial human meal. There was a small bayside restaurant just across the road, and an even smaller tavern to one side of the slipway with a proudly signed 'lunch available' in the window. Edith wavered a little. They were a little late for lunch, after all, and purely human tourists would almost certainly have chosen the restaurant first. However, taverns, in her experience, tended to be a better font of local information, and surely there had to be the odd tourist more interested in local colour than a better chance of food?

It didn't matter in the end, though. Edgar, still fuming mightily to himself, took the choice soundly away from her. Climbing out of his side of the car, he slammed the door behind him and stalked off towards the tavern without a word. Alcohol might not do all that much for them these days, but it did still do _something_ , and it appeared that her brother was very much in need of that something just now.

Oh well. At least his obvious temper would give them their excuse. He did _occasionally_ prove to be useful that way.

She followed him into the bar area at a rather more sedate pace. Edgar paid her no mind at all, heading straight for the bar and straight for the strongest spirit they had to hand, to the wary bemusement of the barman. He drank it back without so much as a wince, and ordered a second to nurse along with his sulk. It wasn't just the barman staring at him after that. He resoundingly ignored them all. Idiot. This, see, _this_ was why he got caught dragging bodies around the place.

No help for it now, though. There never was. Damn the idiot anyway.

She moved to the bar herself, gesturing resignedly for the barman. Edgar pointedly turned his back in her direction, and everyone watching this little drama took note of it. The barman raised an eyebrow at her. She sighed heavily.

"Please excuse my brother," she said, smiling carefully at him. "It's been a long drive, and I'm afraid he left his manners a few towns back. We just wanted to stop over and take a break. Maybe get something to eat? Though, I understand if we're a little too late for that. My brother had, ah. Other priorities first."

Edgar snorted. Loudly. Edith pointedly didn't look at him. Everyone else unabashedly stared at the both of them.

"... Could do you up a bit of something, if you wanted it," the barman hazarded at last, glancing curiously between them both. "If he's going to be drinking like that, he's probably going to _need_ some food in him." He paused, though, and looked at her more seriously. "Are you planning to keep driving after this, though? Because, not to be a busybody or anything, but I'm not sure that'd be wise, miss."

Well. That was as good an opening as any. Edith inclined her head, making sure to look as tired and sheepish as one should under the circumstances. 

"We were hoping to find somewhere to stay for the night," she said earnestly. "Or even a few days, maybe. Like I said, it's been a _very_ long drive, and I think the both of us, my brother particularly, could use a couple of days off. If, ah. If there was anywhere anyone could recommend to stay?"

Soft and sweet, that was the way of it. Soft and gentle and sweet. A shy young woman with a somewhat difficult brother. It was a ruse that had served them well more than once, and one that Edgar did have a tendency to play into. So long as she put on a nervous front to match his ever-visible temper, they'd have an excuse for the odd eccentricity, and a reason to move rapidly onwards when it came to it. Surely someone as visibly rough as her brother wouldn't want to stay anywhere respectable for very long.

And it worked its charms as well here as anywhere else. Several faces around her creased in blunt sympathy, and several glares were aimed at Edgar's back. Oh yes. Once in a very long while, he did turn out to be useful.

There was one face, though, that didn't turn vaguely sympathetic. She caught it out of the corner of her eye, and only really focused on it because it was where the barman turned immediately in answer to her question. A slight little man down the end of the bar, coddled in about four layers of sweater, one eye milky above a scarred cheek and the other green and cool as it looked at her. The barman looked over at him and asked jovially:

"What about it, Henry? There a couple of rooms down at the Inn for a pair of weary travellers?"

But his affability faltered, slightly, at the expression on 'Henry's' face, the closed-faced examination the little man was giving her. Edith faltered too, to be honest. When she met his eyes directly. The clouded one glared balefully, the scars beneath tugging oddly at her mind, but it was the green one that put an odd feeling in her chest. There was something there. Something chilling. As if … As if the horrible little man could _see_ something. In her. As if he could see things she didn’t particularly want to be seen.

And then he looked away. After a long second, holding her still and almost frozen in her seat, he turned his head back to the barman. Not in shame or upset. No. A calm, easy turn of his head. As if, having scanned and catalogued her, she was then easily dismissed. Anger twinged, beneath the strangely chilled sensation in Edith’s chest. Even if she had deliberately aimed not to be seen as a threat, unlike her brother, it still galled. From staring to ignoring her! How dare--!

Well then. She knew which one of these loathsome little people she was going to eat first, didn’t she? Even if he was apparently a hotelier, and his disappearance along with new guests would likely be noted. Never mind. She would find a way. She wasn’t _Edgar_.

“Rooms for weary travellers,” he repeated softly. Thoughtfully. Horrible creature! “Yes. I think we might have a few.” His lip curled faintly. A strange, lopsided little smirk. He dipped his head almost reassuringly towards the barman. “The full Cross treatment, I should say. Only the best for new guests. Not to worry, Tom. I’ll see to it.”

Edith took a moment to swallow down her first waspish response. She was _not_ Edgar. She could manage considerably more subtlety and command than her brother ever could. Even if she suddenly hated this man with all her being, he would never know about it until far, far too late. Patience, dear heart! Cunning!

“The full what treatment?” she asked, and it came out perfectly shy and sweet. “Cross? I’m sorry, is that a boarding house of some kind?”

It would be a horrible, quaint little shack, is what it would be. Some bed and breakfast, rooms knocked together in some old 19th century building, beams and tacky tablecloths and the harsh, interrupting hum of new electricity. The sort of place only good for getting blood on pretty floral bedsheets. Tearing throats out and splaying the remains just right to highlight, if only so briefly, the horrid saccharine falsity of it all.

Then a quick clean-up job, _properly_ done, thank you Edgar, and a cheerful exit the next morning, making sure to pay your respects and offer effusive praise and gratitude to all and sundry in the process.

God, maybe Edgar was right. Maybe she was getting slightly sick of little towns herself now.

She could feel him glowering beside her. Could feel his thick, heated stare on the side of her face. Smell the alcohol from all the way over here. He seemed curious, suddenly. Sullen and stupid, as always, but almost alert again. Looking between her and the hideous little man with sudden interest.

The little man didn’t answer her. It was the barman who did that.

“The Inn of the Cross, miss,” he said, his joviality a bit more artificial now, but with an odd, tacky streak of real pride. “Finest little inn you’ll find on the New England coast. Don’t you worry. With Henry and Laudine looking after you, there’ll be nothing to trouble you again.”

Edith smiled at him. Stiffly. Oh, she was _sure_.

“Laudine?” she asked. Just to pretend curiosity. The barman snorted. And the ever-horrible Henry smiled, the soft, warm, besotted sort of smile that only idiots in love tended to have. Oh, good grief.

“My partner,” he said, in his foggy little voice. “Laudine Renoir. She runs the place, really. I’m more the books and the numbers sort of man. Laudine is the force down at the Inn.”

The barman chuckled broadly. “She’s the force more than just there,” he said, with cheerful insinuation. Only the smallest of steps away from a nudge and a wink. “Most folk find that Laudine’s a force pretty much anywhere.”

Edith did not roll her eyes. It took a great deal of mental effort and willpower, but she didn’t. 

All right. Perhaps she could kill Laudine as well. Just to show what a _force_ really was. Or maybe Edgar could kill her. He did prefer the women anyway. Though, honestly, she didn’t know how much of a mood she was in to reward him. It was his fault they were here, after all. Among these … _creatures_. No. No, perhaps she would kill the woman. In front of the man. Paint him in her blood, see how besotted he looked _then_.

Yes. That might cheer her up. Perhaps she might do that indeed.

“Is it far?” she asked winsomely. “The Inn, I mean? I’d like to meet a woman like that, since you mention her. It’s been a long trip. I could use some fresh company. You know?”

Edgar snorted, thick and ugly beside her. The perfect illustration of why she, why _anyone_ , might need new company. Useful as always. Just for a second, a strange look flashed across the barman’s face as well. A shadow, a flicker in his eyes. Something just as ugly. Jealousy, maybe? Dislike? For her, for Edgar, or for this Laudine? Edie didn’t know, and wasn’t really in any mood to care or find out.

Henry the Hotelier only smiled. Still thin, still foggy. His mismatched eyes bland as pudding on Edith’s face. She despised him. She _detested_ him. She couldn’t wait to tear his throat out. So she smiled back. Soft and sweet and eager.

“It’s not far at all,” he said. “You can eat there, if you like. We have a kitchen, if not a restaurant. We could collect your bags and head right along.”

Edith widened her smile. Not enough to show her teeth. Not _quite_ enough.

“Thank you,” she said. “That sounds lovely.”

It did. It very much _did_.

They walked to the Inn, rather than drove. Henry’s insistence. It really wasn’t far, he said. Edith hardly minded. Her thoughts were fixed on his neck, his carotid, the pulse of blood under the skin, and Edgar was there to carry the bags. Served him right. No, she wanted _lunch_ now. She wanted breakfast and dinner and everything in between. 

She wanted blood. She wanted to flay the man alive. She wanted to break his arms and break his legs and have Edgar pin him down, while she pulled strips of juicy skin from his woman’s thighs. Drink her down, from the neck and from the groin, drain her dry, and then let Edgar sink his teeth into those hideous scars on the man’s cheek. Blind his other eye, tear his tongue out. Edgar _liked_ such things. Brutal, simplistic things. He’d oblige her. He always did. She needed him to right now.

It was almost effervescent, her sudden hatred. Giddying, bright and baffling. How long had it been since she’d hated any man quite this much? A stranger. Only Edgar, she thought. Only her brother could usually pull this level of ire from her. How curious and strange, that this Henry should suddenly join him. What a special little man. 

What a hideous little _monster_.

They came to a building, eventually. A little way up the street, up the hill from the wharf. Exactly as quaint as she’d pictured it. The 19th century boarding house. The harsh lights and bright tablecloths. The longed-for false past and the tacky present, all bundled up into a quaint, tawdry little whole. The oh-so-famous _Inn of the Cross_. They weren’t even on a crossroads, for goodness’ sake!

There was a woman waiting for them on the porch that wrapped around the front and side of the building. A tall, mixed-race woman, what Edith would have called a ‘mulatta’ a century ago. Standing hipshot and confident, with all the unearned grace of a queen. She cast an eye over them as they approached, dismissing them as quickly and casually as her ‘partner’ had. As though Edith couldn’t possibly be any threat at all. She smiled at Henry, though. Opened her arms to him, like a gentle Madonna welcoming a weary martyr home. He went to her gladly.

Laudine, Edith assumed. The force of nature that was Laudine. Well then. Just so.

They were sloping along towards evening now. Ambling their way towards dusk. Then darkness. Then night. Night time, with all its lovely, lurid pleasures. Its red splashes and pools. A lovely little _prick_ to a pretty bubble. She honestly couldn’t wait. Not another second. Not another breath.

Her teeth were out, she realised absently. They were out in the street still. In full view. But her teeth were out, and she couldn’t quite regret it.

Edgar looked pleased, when he stepped up beside her. Edgar was _smiling_.

All right. All right. Maybe one little massacre. Once a decade, as a treat.

For _her_. Obviously. Not for him. It was so difficult to be the restrained sibling all the time. The responsible one, the one who always had to clean up his messes. She could use a chance to let her hair down, so to speak. Just once in a while. She could use a chance to let rip.

What a hideous place this town was. What a truly hideous place.

“… I see you’ve brought us some friends, Henry,” the woman named Laudine said softly. A good voice. A rich, throaty voice. The sort of voice Edith would delight in tearing loose. She was looking down at them. Henry tucked under her arm, some pretense of safety. She was watching Edgar, eyeing Edith’s teeth. She looked calm. Unimpressed. Even pleased.

Edith smiled at her. The full grin. All her gleaming teeth.

“Yes,” said Henry the Hideous. Mild as milk, even still. Sweet as cream. Eyeing her foggily, huddled under his woman’s arm, swaddled in all his sweaters. “They came into Tom’s. Looking for a place to stay, they said. Some food. Tourists, looking for a scenic stay.”

There was that look in his eye, again. The green one, the whole one. A seeing sort of look. Sharper, now. More intense. He looked at Edie, and for all her fizzing hatred, something cold still slipped into her chest. Some … thrill or premonition. She didn’t _like_ that eye. Less even than the milky one, over those decorative claw—

Over those decorative _claw marks_ in his cheek. Claw marks. She’d thought they’d niggled at her. All her lovely imaginings, and she hadn’t realised until now. Her own fingers itched. Her own claws.

Someone had grabbed him before. Someone like her. Someone had held him down and dug their fingers into his cheek.

He had seen something when he looked at her. Before. And he’d known what it was, too.

The icy thing in her chest spread. Seized fast. A sensation of being looked at. A sensation of being _seen_. Not just one eye. She realised that, finally. Noticed it. Not just a horrible green eye, beside a milky white. Not even a green and a pair of brown, the melted chocolate ones belonging to the mulatta woman. More eyes. Many, _many_ more eyes than that.

She tipped her head, at last. Looked behind her. Back down the road towards Tom’s. Towards the wharf. The street they’d climbed, lost in lovely red visions. It was full of shadows, now. A town ambling towards dusk. It was full of _people_ , now.

Fishermen. Sailors and whalers. Townsfolk. All so quaint looking. In their boots and their thick woolens and their 19th century oilskins. Tom the barman stood there. In the road a little way behind them. He’d pulled a polearm from somewhere. A boat-hook. Some ridiculously archaic looking thing, made of wood and metal, not a modern lightweight pole. Thick, ugly iron, and dull brass. More than one of the townsfolk had them. Some of them had _harpoons_ , too.

And they were smiling. All of them. Men and women. They were looking at Edgar and Edie, standing there in their claws and their teeth, and they were smiling.

A long, slow walk up the hill. Not a drive. To give people time to congregate behind them.

It had been the better part of a century since Edith had faced an actual mob. She hadn’t missed the sensation at all.

“A scenic stay,” the woman named Laudine repeated. Thoughtfully, stepping down off the porch towards them. “Travelling tourists. Looking for a nice meal. Hmm? Well, you wouldn’t be the first. Though the ones who come to Brock’s Landing are usually of a more … maritime stripe.”

She laughed. Pearly white teeth in an aristocratic face. She had an aura suddenly. Even _Edgar_ noticed it, stiffening slightly at Edith’s side. A smell. Something like ozone, like lightning. The threat of a storm in the air, tight and close around the woman. A sense of …

Force. A sense of force. The very forceful Laudine.

Edith snarled at her. A less than composed retort, to be sure, but her hatred had sizzled upwards again, surging and slopping under her breastbone. Threat! To threaten her! To actually threaten her. It was ... It was too much. It couldn’t be borne. It had been _decades_. And this, this harlot, with her stupid little man behind her, her cowardly little _monster_ hiding at her back, all mild and sweet—

She remembered her fantasies. Peeling strips of skin from the woman’s thigh. Pinning the man down while he screamed. They were lovely. Bright and red and lurid in her head. And she wouldn’t abandon them now. Oh no. No, definitely not.

The mob changed nothing. Not at all. A massacre for Edgar. And a sweet red evening for her.

The snarl morphed. Melted to a grin. She’d never been so hungry for a throat in all her life.

“Well now,” Laudine murmured. Looking at it. “Is that for me, my dear? Those lovely teeth of yours? Or for my Henry? Hmm?” Edie sneered, and the harlot nodded to herself. “I thought so. I don’t know what it is about him that makes things like you want to tear him so. But you have to understand that it can’t be allowed. We’re quite welcoming here, in Brock’s Landing. But threats to my Henry are just a bit too … _impolite_.”

Edie beamed at her. The world vibrating a lovely, bloody red around her.

“I was going to feed him strips of your skin,” she murmured lightly. The words buzzing from her tongue. Feeling her brother quiver like a hound about to be slipped his leash beside her. “Maybe I’ll feed you his other eye. What do you think? It’s a disgusting thing. I wouldn’t touch it myself. But it might go nicely down your throat. No?”

Laudine didn’t flinch. Neither, for that matter, did Henry. Detestable little man. He looked like nothing so much as the weary martyr once again. Tired and sad. Like the sweet and earnest young woman Edith had been at the tavern, it was an old and rather pathetic-looking ruse. She would enjoy ripping it off his face. 

But Laudine stepped forward first. Spread her arms, standing hipshot and sure in the street. A strange, wild smile on her face. The air crackled around her. Not just an aura, then. The air sang with lightning.

And behind them, in the street, came a shift and rattle of polearms. A rustle and thump of woolens and rubber boots.

“Don’t know that you’ll be able for that now, miss,” Tom the barman said quietly. Genially. “To be sure, those are a fine set of teeth you have there. For _land_ , that is. But as Miss Laudine said, we’re a bit more maritime around here. So, I think you’ll find they’re a little on the small side in Brock’s Landing.”

And he sounded amused. A grating voice in Edith’s ear, speaking to the back of her head. He sounded rough and genial and _amused_.

Edgar, beside her, made a small sound of confusion. He took a step back, bumping into her side. With a hiss of aggravation, Edie took her eyes off the harlot and her coward, and glanced behind her to see …

A gust of wind howled up the street. Icy and straight off the sea. In the rapidly looming shadows of dusk, the townsfolk of Brock’s Landing stood arrayed around them. Archaic. Ancient. And not quite _quaint_ anymore.

Sealskins. Not oilskins. They’d been sealskin all along. And every man and woman there did indeed sport a sudden set of teeth. Fanged and serrated and in some cases oddly … curly.

She’d never seen a selkie before. Or shark folk, or deep ones, or whatever they were.

And she’d certainly never seen a whole town of them.

Tom smiled at her. Noticing her stare. Her sudden … _consideration_. Not worry, no, never that, and certainly not _fear_. But consideration. Edith could allow that. Tom saw it, and smiled. Dark-eyed and laughing, inhuman, over his curled, serrated teeth.

“You’ve been very impolite, my dear,” Laudine said quietly. Implacably. “But your kind often are, aren’t they? You take things that don’t belong to you. Capture and hurt and enslave. Tie down and maim. We’re not fond of such things, here. We know them far too well. And you. You’re a memory for my Henry. One he doesn’t need.”

Edith sneered at her. More from hatred and that icy bubbling in her chest now than anything. More from savagery than surety. There was a feeling in her chest. That icy thing. The sensation that, somehow, suddenly, she wasn’t the predator anymore, but the _prey_. It was a horrible feeling. Hideous and weak. She despised it, and everything else as well.

Most particularly, more than anything else in the _world_ , her thrice-damned _Henry_.

“Whoever it was should have finished the job,” she said sweetly. Curling her claws in her fists. “He’d look better without a face, your Henry. They should have pulled it apart, piece by piece. Ripped his eyes out and fed them to him.”

Henry smiled faintly. Behind Laudine. He tipped his head and shrugged with it.

“I’m sure he planned to eventually,” he said softly. “I’m sure he’d have gotten around to it. If I hadn’t stabbed him, and burned his house around his ears.”

Burned his--! Edie stuttered towards him. Lifted her hands. Her _teeth_. Such a hateful, hateful, _hideous_ animal. Such a horrible little man. She had to _kill_ him. But Laudine stepped into her path, and raised a shining hand with a smile. A fistful of lightning.

“Now now, my dear,” the bitch said lightly. “The first partner on your dance card is me. And then all our other friends. _Then_ you can try for Henry.”

“Not that he has to worry much,” Tom said mildly. “Pair of lubbers like you? Land teeth? I doubt even my hook’ll get wet, let alone Henry’s. But feel free to save some meat for us, Laudine.”

Laudine laughed again. Those pearly little teeth. “I’ll do my best. We’ll see.”

Edith stared at her. Panting. Seething. Her head so white and hollow she couldn’t feel it. Nothing in it but a writhing blankness. A buzzing, singing, seething feeling. So far past hatred she was almost peaceful. Her chest felt light. Her chest _burned_.

And then Edgar … _laughed_. Beside her. Her idiot, stupid brother. The kitten she should have _drowned at birth_ more than a hundred and twenty years ago. The corpse she should have left to rot in his hole. The blind, blithering _moron_ , the abject idiot who’d brought this upon them both. It was his fault, of course. It was all his fault. He was the reason they were here, and he had the gall to _laugh_ at her?

Because it was at her. He was laughing at _her_. Her own brother. And he laughed at her.

“Now how’s it feel to be the one caught with her teeth out, Edie?” he asked blackly. Giddy with enjoyment at her pain. “No clean up gonna get us out of this one. I told you we should have left it. I told you on the cliff. I said we’d had enough of these fucking little _towns_!”

Well. All right then, Edith thought. All right. Maybe she’d kill him first. Before this little town of horrors killed Edie in her turn. Maybe she’d open his throat for him at long, long last. A mercy decades overdue. Edgar had always been such a burden on her. A burden on the _world_. And it was a sister’s duty to see to her brother’s affairs.

Yes. Edgar first. And then Henry. And then as many as she could reach, until someone reached her first.

But she wasn’t going to get that far. She had a feeling. She knew it. There was nothing quaint about this town. Nothing picturesque or saccharine or sweet. No pretty bubble for her to burst. There’d always been blood here. From the very first. There had always been teeth.

She hadn’t faced a mob in a hundred years. She hadn’t faced a true predator in a hundred and twenty.

And here there were fifty if there were three.

“There’s nothing wrong with little towns, you know,” the little man said quietly. With his one milky eye and his one green. Looking down at her like he could _see_. “They can be very kind. Very neighbourly. As long as you’re polite.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Edith spat. More vulgarity than she’d ever uttered in her life. “Fuck you.”

A dozen people chuckled softly. A ring of dark eyes and inhuman teeth. A wall of shadows in the dark. Laudine stepped up to her. Lighting in her hands. The witch grinned her pearly grin.

“Welcome to Brock’s Landing,” she said lightly. “I guarantee that we’ll enjoy your stay.”

At least _briefly_.


End file.
